Sydney’s queer bookstore ‘haven’ to close after 43 years: ‘This has never been about just selling books’

Original article by Lane Sainty

It has just turned 10am when Noel Lee unlocks the door of the Bookshop Darlinghurst and puts the pink sign out on Oxford Street. The message to passersby is simple: “Read Gay Books.”

Sign in place, Lee returns to the store. The shelves are emptying fast, price tags slashed with red pen for the fire sale: after selling books on the site since 1982, the Bookshop Darlinghurst will be closing on Christmas Eve – one week after Guardian Australia visits the store. Lee has worked there for 24 years, greeting customers old and new with ebullience and, sometimes, a hug. Over the decades he has offered book recommendations and life advice to closeted young people, perplexed straight grandparents and everyone in between. “This has never been about just selling books,” Lee said. “It’s been about looking after people and the community.”

The cosy inner-Sydney store has stayed open as laws and attitudes evolved; through the decriminalisation of gay sex in 1984, the height of the Aids crisis, the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2017. Over the years, discrimination and stigma against LGBTQ people has largely, though neither entirely nor equally, given way to a more accepting world. Still, readers come to the bookstore for a window to the past, a glimpse of the future, an escape, a greater understanding of their own life. It is a place to meet and mingle, particularly for a devoted customer base of older gay men. A place to browse in peace. A haven, more than one person said.

In September, owner Charles Gregory announced the store would close permanently due to financial pressures after a planned move to a new development was repeatedly delayed. Customers were bereft; surely, they thought, this community icon would be saved. But as Lee returns to his post behind the till, it is time for final goodbyes.

“I’ve just been dealing with everybody’s grief for the last three months,” Lee says. What about his own feelings? “Once my final shift is done.”

Reino Okkonen, 78, arrives soon after opening. He has been a customer since 1982. Back then, he lived in Double Bay with his partner, Jim, and they would walk to the bookstore on sunny Saturday mornings. They were together for 45 years.

After retiring to Coffs Harbour, they ordered books by phone and would swing by the bookstore whenever they could. “I have spent a few dollars here in 40 years,” Okkonen says with a wry smile. On his first visit after Jim died, 11 years ago, he broke down in Lee’s arms. “I just held him and he cried and cried and cried,” Lee says.

Okkonen is partly here to peruse the photography section one last time. But mostly, he came to thank Lee. “You don’t do that with just anybody, you know,” he says.

Marc Linke, 61, thinks he first visited the bookstore in the early ’90s. The decade prior, hailing from Wollongong, he took one look at the Sydney gay scene centred around Oxford Street and thought wow. “Marc was a genuine denizen of the night,” Lee says jovially, as he scans Linke’s haul of local authors. (Accurate, Linke said.) He went on to self-publish a pseudonymous, semi-autobiographical book about his adventures in the ‘80s, titled Paris Nights.

Linke was proud to have committed Oxford Street’s vivid culture to paper, even without a publisher. But then an email came out of the blue: the Bookshop Darlinghurst wanted to stock Paris Nights. It sold very well and even elicited an email from a young actor who wanted to turn it into a play.

Ten minutes after Linke leaves the store, Oscar Balle-Bowness walks in. He grew up in Cairns, an isolating experience. He remembers being glared at when buying a gay magazine in his home town. Now 30, he recalls visiting the Bookshop Darlinghurst for the first time, fizzing with nerves and curiosity.

“I was here looking for a birthday present for a boyfriend,” he recalls. “And I bought him a biography called Paris Nights.”

When Balle-Bowness learns he has just missed Linke, he is amazed. “My boyfriend at the time was a writer and actor, and he was so inspired by the book he then turned it into a one-person play.”

These serendipitous moments happen more often than you would think, Lee says. He describes a “palpable sense of transmission”, moments where you can almost reach out and touch history and culture as it travels from one generation to the next. It might be the saddest aspect of the closure, he muses. The loss of a space that encourages those spontaneous connections.

“It allows that,” Lee says. “Because we’re surrounded by stories.”

***

For years after his partner, Jim, died, Lee could see Okkonen’s grief whenever the longtime customer came in. It hung over him like a cloud. Before Okkonen left the store for the last time, they got talking about how it eventually lifted.

“He learned he had to let go on some level,” Lee says. “Instead of being sad all the time, he had to be happy for the years he had. Which, you know – so many people have not had.”

Lee recently experienced a similar shift in perspective. Work had been a slog since September, replete with uncertainty and sadness. But one day, he was putting out the sign and something flipped. Actually, I’ve had 24 amazing years here, he thought. It helped.

He still has his own grief to deal with. But not until his final shift is done.